I know that everyone will be shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to hear this, but it turns out that Izzie and George have no sexual chemistry. They spend the episode trying and trying to get the magic back from their drunken encounter, but nothing is working. And to that I say, thank God, and maybe this is the beginning of the end of that really, really bad idea. Another twosome that has no chemistry is Hahn and Cristina. Hahn actually switches around her assigned resident because she doesn't want to work with Cristina, and she takes Meredith instead. Cristina is absolutely crushed, and tries doing ortho with Callie, but so far nothing lights her fire like cardio. Bailey tells her that she needs to look for another specialty since it's not working out with Hahn, but reveals later that this was just to get her to look around, realize cardio is her calling, and fight harder for it. Why was Bailey giving out this advice? Callie, still having a rough go of things, asked Bailey to cover for her Chief Resident duties for a day so that she could do a bunch of surgeries and feel better about herself. This turns into a few days, and it also illustrates just how awesome Bailey is at running things and solving problems. Richard notices what's going on, and finally admits he should have named Bailey as Chief Resident in the first place. He then offers her the job and fires Callie.

Meredith's patient of the week is a mother who came in with her baby, panicked because she fell down some stairs and hit the baby's head. Once she hands off her daughter, however, she collapses and it turns out she has massive internal injuries. Hahn needs to perform multiple surgeries on her heart and lungs in an effort to keep her alive. Her husband is having a hard time of it because they had only adopted the baby a week before, and he doesn't feel any attachment to her. Lexie is tasked with watching over the baby, and is having a really hard time with the idea that the dad wants to give her up if his wife dies. While his wife is in surgery, Meredith gets him to admit the few things he knows about the baby, and points out that those are things no one else knows. Somehow this gets through to him, and although he runs from the hospital when his wife dies, he ends up returning to take care of his daughter. Lexie, inspired by this, tells Meredith some random facts about herself -- including her mad Etch-A-Sketch skillz -- in hopes that these will give Meredith reason to not hate her so much. Meredith, who had asked Alex to stop seeing Lexie, changes her mind and has Alex get a drunk Lexie home that night. They arrive just in time to see a disheveled, drunk Thatcher stumble out of the house to try and drive to the store for some booze. Alex, in a move he clearly learned from past personal experience, offers to go pick up some more alcohol for him and although he royally pisses Thatcher off, he keeps him from driving drunk. Lexie is both grateful and humiliated, and makes Alex promise not to tell Meredith about the state their father is in. That's probably a good thing, because Meredith is feeling good enough by the end of the episode to actually spend some time in bed with Derek rather than sprinting back home, giving all of us hope that maybe she might pull it together after all.